Infection strains for teaching lab

Model Organism: Worms Methods & Reagents
1

Hello,

I have a student who would like to study bacterial (or viral, I suppose) pathogenesis in C. elegans, but it looks like Pseudomonas PA14 is Biosafety Level 2, and might not be great for use in a teaching with diverse traffic. Any other options we can consider?

Thanks,
-Kevin.

2

What about some of the natural C. elegans pathogens, like the ones on which Jonathan Hodgkin’s group has been working? ie. M. nematophlilum or Leucobacter species

3

P.S. Two other pathogens that just leapt to mind are D. coniospora (fungal pathogen, studied by the Ewbank lab) and the microsporidian pathogen N. parisii (studied by the Troemmel lab).

4

Hello

Culturing Drechmeria can be a bit tricky (e.g. you can’t get rid of fungal contamination easily), so I’d recommend Serratia marcescens.

It’s a Level I pathogen.

We’ve deposited 3 strains at the CGC (Db10, its streptomycin resistant derivative Db11, and the attenuated Db1140).

See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12660152 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17267603.

It doesn’t kill as quickly as PA14, but it is easy to grow and the symptoms of infection are readily visible.

And the Db11 genome has been sequenced and annotated (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25070509).

Hope that helps

Jonathan

5

Thanks for all your help!!! Sounds great!